


Blank Space

by HalcyonStars



Series: Soulmate AU's [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Mute Castiel, Sign Language, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, alternate universe - soul mates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-05 03:57:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4164852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HalcyonStars/pseuds/HalcyonStars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"That's my soul mark." Mary said </p><p>Dean prodded the skin back and forth. “Does everyone have one?” He asked, and Mary hesitantly whispered ‘yes.’ Dean pondered for a moment, dumbstruck by the revelation. “Why don’t I have one?” </p><p>In which most every person has the words of their soulmate written on their arms. Every one except for Dean Winchester, that is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blank Space

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t specifically state the time jumps, but they’re pretty easy to figure out: one is at the start and the other is in italics

 

Twenty-five years ago in a quaint house in Lawrence, a little boy walked up to his mommy. He tugged on the leg of her soft silk pyjamas until she looked down to the child.

“What is it sweetie?” The woman asked, picking up the boy and holding him to her chest, nourishing the ‘I wuv hugs’ on his tiny t-shirt. She resettled in front of their warm fireplace, the flames flickering sporadically in their nook. Soft blonde hair burrowed into her neck and chubby fingers traced over the words on her arm. She felt warmth colour her heart.

“Whaz tat mummy?” The little boy mumbled through his sleep ridden haze.

Mary looked down to the elegant font on her wrist. The script was in John Winchester’s hand writing, her soulmate. His tough façade was such a discrepancy to her mark, the polar opposite of what she’d anticipated for the day they met. She wouldn’t change a thing if she could. Unpredictability could be good in that way. She smiled nostalgically at the treasured memory.

“That’s my soul mark.” She said. She explained to her son how a soul mark shows the first words your soulmate would ever say to you.

The flames continued to lick the edges of their hearth.

Dean prodded the skin back and forth like he expected it to do something, waiting for it to jump to life under his touch.

“And you have one?” The curious child asked, and Mary nodded. “And Daddy has one?” She nodded again. “Even baby Sammy has one?” Mary nodded one last time.

Dean was more awake now, his curiosity peaking. He wriggled animatedly in her lap, a pout on his lips and face scrunched in befuddlement. His hand moved in a strange way, like he was waving and twiddling this thumb. He couldn’t sit still, that child.

Mary vaguely remembered being that age, everything was magical and a mystery and new. As time passed it faded and that wonder in the world seemed to dwindle. Now, she was given the gift of watching her children experience the same things.

“Does everyone have one?” Her little boy asked, and Mary hesitantly whispered ‘yes.’ Dean pondered for a moment, dumbstruck by the revelation. “Why don’t I ‘ave one?” The flames dimmed lightly, and Mary just cringed and looked down at her child sadly.

She sang _Hey Jude_ to her son as a lone tear trickled down her face, and rocked him as he fell to sleep.

***

Dean hesitantly gets out of bed –well, _gets_ may be an overstatement, flops is probably the more accurate word. He checks his emails, one from his mom inviting him to a family barbeque that weekend, one from Sam talking about his soulmate _again_ –“ _Jess is so pretty Dean, and her hair is gold like the sun, and Jess this Jess that blah blah blah.”_

The conversation may not have officially ended like that, but for all Dean cared, that’s how it happened. The last mail in his inbox was from Charlie, a photo edit Stannis Baratheon holding a mug that said #1 Dad. The corner of his lips twitch in a hesitant smirk. Okay, so maybe the last item cheers up his sour mood slightly, but he will not give her the satisfaction of knowing.

Dean is vehemently set on maintaining a stroppy demeanour today, and hell he’d keep that mood just out of principle. If turning the big three-O tomorrow isn’t bad enough as it is, he’s still living alone in his crappy apartment working some crappy job serving ungrateful and crappy customers.

He slams the door shut behind him on his way out, not even bothering to lock the door. If someone is desperate enough to steal from _his_ apartment, then they deserved to take whatever they wanted.

He monotonously drives to work, mumbling a half-hearted hello to everyone he passed. He dons his vest, a leaden yellow that seems to have dulled the longer he’s worked there. He’s acquainted with the place by now, years and years of the same familiarising him. He’s watched new employees come and go like the wind. And yet, here he still is. He ponders why he could never move on to bigger and better things, especially when he isn’t content here. He has the skills and the qualifications for more, he could fix cars and even had the charm to sell them, if he put his mind to it, he could do great things. But those hypothetical situations didn’t and would never come to pass. He simply hasn’t the motivation for them, the drive, the desire. He just… is.

Routine is boring, but it is predictable, and predictability, though mundane, is good for the enigma that is Dean Winchester. Predictability was getting a soul mark at birth like everybody else, unpredictability was being born without one.

Needless to say, unpredictability and Dean don’t have the greatest relationship.

It was quite the surprise finding out he was one of the few poor bastards that walked the Earth that was destined to die alone. He is wrong, strange, unordinary, and he is alone. 

Time passes slowly as he contemplates stealing whiskey from the liquor isle. He thinks he’d take the roughest they had, brutal and a bitch and just like life.

He wonders if they’ll fire him if they catch him.

He figures not, since he’s been working here since the dinosaurs roamed the land and they haven’t done so yet. He can see it in mind’s eye, the beasts stomping and screeching and wreaking havoc and Dean would be sitting in the middle of it all in his ugly yellow vest. He thinks it’d be pretty cool to be a dinosaur. He’d choose to be a pterodactyl, fly above it all, see it all, take what you want when you want. Yes, he thinks he’d make a good dinosaur.

He wonders if actually did up taking that whiskey. Sobriety does not these thoughts make.  

Or perhaps the job is finally getting to him. Both boast a great possible.

The conveyer belt drags the groceries of the next customer to Dean, and he feels bile crawling its way up his throat when he sees all the kale this guy is buying. It looks like a forest, embedded with reds and yellows in the tomatoes and capsicums. Everything is so _healthy,_ it repulses him, residual instinct from giving Sam so much crap for his eating habits. Rabbit food, Sam swears by it. Dean, though? No thank you. If he wants to eat leaves he’ll go out to the park and munch on the trees. 

Dean scans the food items one by one, the repetitive _beep_ as they cross the red laser. He looks up to find a man wearing a jacket over a plaid shirt over a t-shirt. A white top peeks through the unbuttoned blue plaid shirt, and he finishes his look with a black scarf. Why he has so many layers stacked on, _and_ wearing a scarf in summer, in _Kansas_ , is beyond the realm of Dean’s comprehension. On his top is an excessively greasy burger. Beneath the picture it says ‘ _I love burgers_.’ Dean thinks it may as well say ‘ _Wanna tango with_ _atherosclerosis_?’ there’s that much fat dripping off it. He looks down at the fresh produce, then back to the top. This guy is giving him whiplash.

It is only when Dean finishes packaging the food and hands it over to the man that he sees him staring at Dean’s virgin arm, flawless and untouched skin, _unmarked._ He stares with wide eyes, and something flashes in them. Like he’s hopeful? No, Dean decides, like he’s scared. Scared of the mutant, the abomination, and Dean is used to it every day but for some reason coming from this stranger it _hurts._ This man matters and he shouldn’t, some inconsequential person whom he’ll never see again means nothing but the weight of thirty years is crashing down on him. Being taunted and bullied in school, listening to Sam and Charlie and Benny _rave_ about their soulmates while Dean has to sit there and smile, listen and pretend everything is fucking peachy when he’s dying inside. His built up anger erupts like a volcano, the dam wall crumbles and the flood of water storms out.

Next time someone suggests he invest in some cathartic mechanisms he’ll listen, perhaps will avoid his explosion. But for now, he’s going to blow, and all better run lest they want to be destroyed by his wrath.  

He slams his hand aggressively on the counter, numerous eyes turning to the sound. He doesn’t care about them, his vision is a narrow tunnel, the end of the road the man ahead of him. Dean’s got him in his tracks and he’s flooring it, foot on the gas with no plan to slow down.  

 “Look momma, it’s a freak!” Dean shouts derisively, scowling at the man still looking at his arm. He’s sick of people pointing and staring like he’s not even human. “This aint a frickin zoo, you douche, grab your shit and move on.”

And is that… a smile on the man’s face? Like he’s just completely ignored Dean’s words. The man’s eyes –crystalline blue, gorgeous eyes – spark, and it’s almost like Dean can visible see the life whirl in them. The man hastily and clumsily pulls off his jacket and gets to work on his shirt.

“Uh, it aint a strip club either.” Dean says, at a complete loss because this guy is undressing in the middle of a supermarket.

Perhaps if the setting were changed he’d encourage the action, after all, he does have eyes, and the guy is quite a looker. His features are sharp yet not hostile, defined cheekbones that could cut glass. His face looks as if it’s sculpted out of marble and Dean would be a fraud if he said he wasn’t curious to find out if his abs felt the same.

His sexual prowess withstanding, and no longer humouring his flashfire fantasy, they _are_ in the middle of a public setting. So after Dean’s thoughts _briefly_ detour, he’s back on the ‘what is going on’ thought train.

But the guy doesn’t seem to care, not about humility, not about Dean’s thoughts, not about his own shirt, which is haphazardly discarded and thrown to the floor. Like this Dean can see his toned arms, and his previous thoughts are coming back with a vengeance. Between the lean body, the health foods and the burger t-shirt Dean really doesn’t know what to make of him, nor does he know what to think when he sees the messy scrawl written on the blue-eyed beauties arm. The man holds out his arm, eyes wide and pleading.

Years of the same replayed day, each breath a shallow puff and now he struggles to find air. His heart beats erratically, trying to jump out of the confines of his chest. Could this be in some cruel and malicious twist of fate that this man is Dean’s soulmate but Dean does not belong to this man?  Has life tried to bend him over again, because on this man’s arm are the words ‘ _Look momma, it’s a freak!’,_ written in Dean’s scrawl,and on Dean’s arm is nothing.

The man grapples at his scarf, unlooping it, removing it. It falls to the ground with his shirt, and Dean gasps. On his neck is a crosshatch of scars, raised pink skin intersects white lines. It looks painful, horrifyingly so. The dark haired man’s hands fly in a flurry of movement, intricate shapes creating words just with his body. He’s silent, and yet he speaks, and what he speaks says a thousand words.

It says _I’m sorry._ It says _forgive me._ It says _it’s **me.**_

_***_

_Castiel was four when he was walking down the street with his big brother Michael. He had his tiny hand in the huge grasp of his brother’s, and he huddled close to him when they passed Mr. Crowley’s house. He was a scary man, but all his older brother’s said he was being silly. They were braver than him. He didn’t like Mr. Crowley and he didn’t like his big scary dog, Juliette._

_He liked them even less when the dog attacked him and damaged his vocal cords._

_When Castiel went to school, and the playground around him bustled with the shouts of excited children, he sat in the corner and stayed quite. When the other kids used words to talked, he too used words, not worse, just differently. When his hands moved with an amateur grace, Castiel and his family beamed in pride at him. He was brave, he was young, and he knew a second language._

_The other kids were not his family. The other kids laughed at him._

_They flapped their hands and called him freak. They mocked him for the few little sounds he could still make._

_He became completely silent from that day on._

_He became the words written on his arm._

***

_25 years later, he felt the bad memories of those words fade.  
25 years later, he became proud of them once more. _

_***_

Dean laughs and he cries a little, and he doesn’t know which comes first. He doesn’t care that a fast growing line of angry and confused customers builds up. He doesn’t care about anything other than the man in front of him. He doesn’t care as he jumps the counter and hugs the man. It’s not some cliché thing like being struck by lightning, or going dizzy, or falling in love at first sight, and they aren’t going to drop to one knee and ask for the other’s hand in marriage. What it is though, is like coming home, like warmth. It’s like for the first time in thirty years he feels something more than content. Its happiness and its joy. Its more than existing, its _living._

Dean pulls back with tears in his eyes, only now realising how much of a hold this burden has had on him for his entire life. He lets memories flood back to him, of hands moving flawlessly like the language was made for him. He remembers getting the impulse to learn ASL in senior year, something akin to a fire inside driving him and he wouldn’t stop until it was satiated. He wonders now if that was fate, giving him a hand from the sidelines. Maybe he should apologise to Her.

 _‘C-A-S-T-I-E-L.’_ The man signs, and Dean loves that he can put a name to the face. Castiel signs the C again, followed by the motion for a bee, showing the short hand of his name. Dean tests it out for himself, muscle memory kicking in. The memory is not only from high school, but from his childhood, all those times he’d fidgeted with his hands for no reason at all.

Deep down he knew it all along.

Because maybe others had words on them for their soul mark, but Dean in his own way also had words. He didn’t need them to be tangible for them to be real, because proof of his soul mate lived in him, in his actions, in his innate instincts, even when he was a child.

And heck, ‘ _D-E-A-N’_ thinks that’s pretty special.

***

 

The sizzle of tender beef on the grill and the drift of smoke painted the scene of Dean’s 30th birthday barbeque. The Winchester home where he’d grown up was filled with all of his closest friends and family, and chirpy chatter filled the backyard. All that was missing was the birthday boy himself.

 _Typical of Dean to be late to his own party_ , Mary thought, but then again, he was always known for a knack for getting in trouble. He’d have to hurry if you wanted first grabs at food before they ran out, because many of Dean’s friends, much like himself, had an affinity for all things greasy.  

Fortunately she doesn’t have to wait long before her son walks through the back door, a sincere smile on his face. His shoulders aren’t hunched and the wrinkles on his forehead are smoothed out. Dean looks younger and happier than he has in far too long as he drags an unfamiliar man in tow. The man in question is wearing a black jeans, deep blue sweater that compliments his eyes magnificently, with a grey and white patterned scarf. Mary looks down at her t-shirt and knee length jean shorts and wonders if she has grossly misinterpreted the weather. But the sun beats down on her and she can feel the freckles crawling their way up to her face. She happened to have some kind of kinship with the spots, much like her eldest son, who was still dragging the lost looking man towards her.

“Mom, this is Cas. He’s my soulmate.” Dean says excitedly and getting straight to the point. Mary’s upbringing in a mannerly household is all that keeps her from showering the newcomers with the drink in her mouth. She swallows, and tries to find the words.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I don’t understand.” She says, because this can’t be right, her son has no soulmate. For years she’d tried to console him to no avail. She doesn’t understand. This _Cas,_ for the part, looks confused.

Dean seems to realise his mistake. “Oh, right. Cas, this is my mom.” 

Cas looks into Mary’s eyes, green clashing with blue, and seems very genuine when he signs to her. A huge grin etches itself on Dean’s face when he translates.

“He said it’s a pleasure to meet you, and that he hopes he isn’t intruding.”

Mary’s eyes water, because now it makes sense. Dean has no words on his arms because his soulmate was never destined to have a voice. She thinks of that night in front of the fire with her son, when she felt her heart break for her baby. Words that were never there plunged right through her heart, and she had wondered how something that didn’t even exist could hurt so much.

Now she knew.

Mary waves her hands and dismisses him. “No, of course not, please make yourself at home. We have plenty of food to go around.” Cas nods gratefully. She grasps his hand. “We’ve been waiting thirty years to meet you, I hope you can stay a little longer.” Dean blushes, a blush that likewise makes its way on to Cas’ face as well.

Mary watches with warmth in her heart as Dean introduces Cas to everyone, laughing and joking and carefree. All the pent up sadness inside from the years she felt she was failing as a mother, doomed to watch her son in pain, are fading, and today she gets to see her little boy happy. She can finally watch someone else protect him in a way she never could.

She looks on as Dean loads his plate with burgers and snags a beer, and as Cas nudges him and levels him with a stern look. Dean reluctantly piles salad onto his plate and a garden of broccoli. He steals a piece of carrot from the others plate and Cas pecks Dean on the cheek, the latter’s lips lifting at their corners. If she had any doubts this was the one for Dean, they had been obliterated. Anyone who can get Dean to eat greens is nothing short of magical.

25 years later, the solitary tear comes back, but for an entirely different reason.

25 years later, Dean finally smiles. So does she.

**Author's Note:**

> Note: I'm not implying Cas is the only mute/deaf person in the world, so Dean isn't the /only/ person who wouldn't have a mark, but this is largely from his perspective and he doesn't know of any one else, as like himself, they're sensitive about the matter and don't like to broadcast it. 
> 
> Also thanks to LittleSexySlash who helped fix the medical innacuracies :)


End file.
